The Santa Barbara High boys water polo team drew first blood against Servite in the first round of the CIF-SS Division 1 playoffs, but it was the Friars who dealt the most damage, scoring eight unanswered to down the Dons, 9-3, at the Santa Barbara pool on Wednesday
Santa Barbara ends its season with a 26-7 record and an undefeated Channel League title.
“They’re just a really good team,” said Santa Barbara coach Mark Walsh of Servite, which finished fourth in the rugged Trinity League. We could see just the size and strength they had and we didn’t have a lot of good matchups. We were kind of outmanned at every position, so it’s hard to create offense that way.”
Servite coach Andy Coffmana said his team’s game plan was to take away the Dons’ top scorers, Landin Romo and Jerrad Burford.
“They’re more of a drive-oriented team. When we saw them earlier in the year, I think we knew we were just a little bigger and knew that we were going to use that,” Coffmana said. “I just thought we followed the game plan and we looked prepared on defense.”
But it was the Dons who scored first as Mateo Obando beat the goalie 20 seconds into the contest to give his team a 1-0 lead.
Obando floated the ball and the goalie mistimed it, allowing it to go by him for the 1-0 lead.
“That goal is not our prettiest goal we’ve had,” Walsh said with a laugh.
“I don’t know if the goalie was sleeping a little bit, but the problem was we made a lob into the wind against a good goalie, so now every other guy after that started lobbing, hoping it would go in. I think it might have killed our offense a little bit.”
The Dons struggled to find any offense for the next 20 minutes. On the flip side, Servite tied the contest a 1-1 to end the first quarter.
Then, after some great saves from Dons’ goalie Jaxon Burford, the Friars started finding the back of the net with ease.
First, Steve Rubly scored at the 4:14 mark to give Servite its first lead of the game. Then, on a power play that took Burford out of the cage, Andrew Cagney was able to score on his second shot attempt for a 3-1 lead.
Finally, Lucas Rodriguez caught the ball in the middle of the ball and flicked a no-look shot past Burford into the back of the net to give Servite a 4-1 lead headed into the break.
“I loved our defense and I will always take a defensive effort over offense any day, but I was looking for our offense to pop a little more. I thought we didn’t look as crisp and clean as I would have liked until later,” Coffmana said.
“Going forward, we need to maintain the defense and keep elevating our offense as each round goes to keep moving on.”
In the third period, the Friars kept that offensive pace as Cagney scored his second to give the Friars a 5-1 lead. Rubly scored with 16 seconds left in the frame for a 6-1 advantage.
In the final frame, Rubly’s third goal, which led all scorers, and another from Ellias Guardado gave Servite a 8-1 lead.
Santa Barbara would score a pair of back-to-back goals as first Jerrard Burford would find the back of the net on a penalty shot and then Ryder Green would score on a tough shot with 3 minutes left.
Servite got one more with two minutes left.
Walsh said his team knew it would be tough to compete in Division 1, and noted that the goal this season was to dominate the Channel League — which it did by going 8-0.
“Our guys knew CIF would be a tough challenge, so they kind of took it upon themselves to make the league a priority for us. They set the tone early on with that,” Walsh said.
“It made sense to me, so we bought in and we put in a strong effort to do well in league and we did just that.”